An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
