A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
