A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
