A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 eliminated by fantastical monsters (*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 national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered 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 conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
