A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
