A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
