A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting 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 substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
