An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed 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 gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
