A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
