An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
