A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
