A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
