An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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
