An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually 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. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*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 ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
