An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
