A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
