A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
