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Film:
Arthur (2011)
Occupation: Heir
A grown-up version of Richie Rich—albeit trapped in a state of arrested development—
Arthur Bach (Russell Brand) is known for what he calls his "savantish gift for defying death with fun," dressing up as Batman and speeding through the streets of New York in a custom Batmobile. Due to his well-publicized antics, he can only receive his $950 million inheritance if he marries high society bachelorette Susan Johnson (Jennifer Garner), who happens to be a man-eating psychopath. Instead, Arthur falls for a city tour guide (Greta Gerwig) whom he attempts to woo in a lavish fashion, e.g. renting out Grand Central Station for a private date. But Arthur has
The Queen herself,
Helen Mirren, as his nanny, and ex-heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield to whip him into shape.
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Film:
The Green Hornet (2011)
Occupation: Publisher
The original fictional billionaire playboy, Britt Reid (
Seth Rogen) is the 28-year-old son of James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), publisher of the Los Angeles newspaper,
The Daily Sentinel. Britt spends most of his days trashing hotel rooms and bedding models, only finding solace in the miraculous cappuccinos he receives every morning courtesy of the family mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou). When his father dies, Britt inherits the family business. Seeing that he's wasted his life, Britt assumes the identity of
The Green Hornet and convinces Kato to form a crime-fighting duo. Reid gets the karate-kicking mechanic to outfit one of many luxury cars in the family garage with several gadgets and a cavalry of weapons, dubbing their gang-busting ride Black Beauty.
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Films:
Batman Begins (2005),
The Dark Knight (2008)
Occupation: Business tycoon
The son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce (Christian Bale) witnesses his parents' murder at the age of 8, and is raised by the family butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine). He eventually travels the world, becoming an expert in hand-to-hand combat. At 25, Wayne returns to his hometown of Gotham City not only to control the family business, Wayne Enterprises—which was founded by merchant ancestors of the Wayne family in the 17th century—but also to assume the identity of
Batman to fight crime. As one of the top 10 multinational conglomerates, Wayne Enterprises employs approximately 170,000 people in 170 countries and owns companies in shipping, steel, aerospace, chemicals, technology, biotech, and more. The technology wing of the company fascinates Wayne the most, and he, along with designer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), develop a prototype armored car and an armored suit to help Batman rid the city of evil.
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Film:
Richie Rich (1994)
Occupation: Business tycoon
The son of a mogul with a net worth of $70 billion,
Richie Rich (Macaulay Culkin) is the world's wealthiest child. His father, Richard Rich Sr., is very loving—the family even employs a scientist who invents a "Dadlink" that locates him for young Richie as he travels internationally. Like
Bill and Melinda Gates, the Riches donate large portions of their wealth to charitable causes, and keep all of their funds in banks, the stock market, and real estate, because they don't value money very highly. They do, however, commission a portrait of the family carved into a mountain, dubbed Mount Richmore, where they keep the Rich family's childhood keepsakes. Richie's life is certainly not too shabby—the New York Yankees coach him in baseball, he has an amusement park in his backyard, an on-site McDonalds, and his personal trainer is Claudia Schiffer.
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Film:
The Great Gatsby (1974)
Occupation: Bootlegger
Jay Gatsby (
Robert Redford) is the personification of the Horatio Alger myth. Born James Gatz, he came from a poor family in North Dakota, and, after dropping out of college, renamed himself Gatsby and learned the capitalist ropes while working under copper tycoon Dan Cody. When he returns from serving in World War I, he finds himself in the middle of prohibition America—the era of the nouveau riche—and makes a fortune in bootlegging, thanks to his associations with various gangsters of the time. He erects a
gorgeous mansion in the fictional West Egg, Long Island, where he hosts lavish parties in the hopes of winning
Daisy's (Mia Farrow) heart.
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Film:
Chinatown (1974)
Occupation: Real estate investor, Business tycoon
On the surface, Noah Cross (John Huston)—the private co-owner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power along with Hollis Mulwray—is a jovial and pleasant man. But he turns out to be a sociopath with a burning desire to control everything around him. Cross owns the Albacore Club, and has hatched an evil plot to ruin the Northwest Valley by diverting water from it and then purchasing it at a premium. Then, Cross plans to incorporate his newly acquired territory into Los Angeles, before irrigating and developing it. And if that wasn't enough, he also owns a sprawling, Spanish-style estate with a salt-water garden pond.
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Films:
Iron Man (2008),
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Occupation: Industrialist, Engineer
The son of Howard Stark, a wealthy industrialist and head of Stark Industries,
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is an engineering prodigy who built a circuit board at the age of 4 and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology summa cum laude at the age of 17. After his parents are killed in a car accident, Stark inherits his father's company—the chief weapons manufacturer for the U.S. military. When he's not wooing women, Stark follows in his father's footsteps, creating wildly inventive weapons like the "Jericho" missile, until he finds himself critically wounded in an explosion. Stark has an electromagnet inserted into his chest to keep shrapnel from making its way to his heart and killing him and eventually, he builds a high-tech suit of armor powered by a miniature arc reactor, enabling him to fly and fire various weapons.
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Film:
Jurassic Park (1993)
Net worth: $17 billion
Occupation: Genetic engineer
Loosely modeled after the Scottish-American industrialist-cum-dinosaur collector Andrew Carnegie, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is founder of InGen, a genetic engineering company. InGen discovers a method of cloning dinosaurs, using blood extracted from mosquitoes that were trapped in amber dating back to the Mesozoic Era. Hammond "spared no expense" in transforming the island of Isla Nublar—a fictional island about 120 miles from Costa Rica—into a futuristic theme park filled with dinosaurs that he dubbed, fittingly,
Jurassic Park.
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Film:
Citizen Kane (1941)
Occupation: Newspaper magnate
Based on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst,
Charles Foster Kane was born in the small town of Little Salem, Colorado, around 1863. His parents were given a mine to settle a bill for room and board, and it turned out the mine was rich in gold. By 1871, Kane's incredibly wealthy family places him under the guardianship of a prominent New York City banker named William Parks Thatcher, who spoils Kane, but effectively strips him of his youth. After he gets kicked out of nearly every Ivy League college, Kane takes over a Thatcher-owned newspaper, the
New York Inquirer and transforms it into a paragon of yellow journalism with headlines that would make today's
New York Post blush. He forces his second wife into a humiliating career as an opera singer and then, the depressed, money-burning megalomaniac retires to Xanadu, a gothic mansion on a giant private mountain in Florida that is, according the film, the world's largest private estate.
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Film:
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Occupation: Chocolatier
In Tim Burton's 2005 adaptation of Roald Dahl's celebrated children's book
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) is the son of a dentist who burned his Halloween candy every year, and forbade him from being a chocolatier. However, Burton's Wonka doesn't hold a candle to
Mel Stuart's 1971 film, starring Gene Wilder as the eccentric, top-hatted candy man. Fifteen years before the movie begins, Willy Wonka opened the largest chocolate factory in the world. But it became heavily guarded after spies stole some of his recipes. Wonka's top-secret factory puts Hershey Park to shame, replete with lickable wallpaper, chocolate rivers, and a horde of miniature orange-skinned, green-haired helpers called Oompa-Loompas. Wonka even owns a multi-directional glass elevator—the "Wonkavator"—that can fly.
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Films:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002),
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005),
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007),
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
Occupation: Wizard
A Death Eater and pure-blood wizard, Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) is an arrogant, aristocratic snob who is obsessed with his family's high social standing—and maintaining said position—and has an aversion to Muggles and half-bloods, like
Harry Potter. He lives with his wife, Narcissa Malfoy, and their son, Draco Malfoy, at the Malfoy Manor. He cruelly abuses his house elf, Dobby, and showers riches on his son, going so far as to purchase personal broomsticks for Draco and the entire Slytherin
Quidditch team when he's made Seeker. When the Malfoy patriarch isn't committing acts of bribery, he's making sizeable donations to the Ministry, to charity, and to St. Mungo's Hospital, in order to maintain influence.