An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
