A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
