A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish 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 cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
