An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
