A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a public 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 collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with 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 satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
