A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea 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 portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
