A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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
