A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches 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 never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
