An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
