An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, 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 pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
