A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply 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 future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
