An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — 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 headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
