A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming 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 cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
