An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 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 more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
