A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
