A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
