An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
