A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
