A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
