An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, 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 societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
