A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently 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, selfish, cruel 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
