A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
