An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
