An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating 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 gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious 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. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
