An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade 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 triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
