An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
