A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
