An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage 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 makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
