A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually 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 worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
