If he’s modern, who or when is ancient?
Daredevil, Bruce Banner, any of the heroes in Silverado, Jim Kirk (doesn’t carry cash!).
I said depending.
To add a few.
Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes: working class Brooklyn kid like Steve Rogers
Daredevil: orphan from Hell’s Kitchen(which is vastly poorer than IRL Hell’s Kitchen).
Nick Fury: Probably came from a poor background based on the story he told Cap about his dad.
Agent 13/Sharon Carter: Based on being Peggy Carter’s niece I’d guess Middle Class to Upper Middle Class. I believe the accent adopted by Peggy Carter is a posh accent but our British dopers would be better to judge.
Wasp/Janet Van Dyne: Daughter of wealthy scientist.
Spider-Man has always come from a struggling family.
Depending on how you define “upper class,” I would argue that the Merlin in Harry Dresden’s world fits the bill. There’s probably a few others on the White Council, as well.
Um. . .
How exactly is his wealth “strongly implied”? That’s like saying that a nuke is “strongly implied” to be destructive.
He’s also considered to be an historical figure, not a fictional one. At the very least we can say that we’re unsure if he’s fictional or not, so that’s another disqualifier.
I think you’d have to consider the heroes in Atlas Shrugged– Francisco D’Anconia Hank Reardon, and Dagny Taggart. Book is pretty modern and film is more so. John Galt never had much money, although he could amass some considerable resources. Still, not rich.
Miles Vorkosigan and his father, Aral. Both are counts.
Simon Templar (The Saint)
Sara Crewe.
Sophia the First. (Yes, she was born a poor shoemaker’s daughter, but when her mother married the king, she became “a princess overnight”.)
Well, there’s DJANGO UNCHAINED.
There’s the teen stuff like* The Princess Diaries* and The Prince and Me. Can’t get more upper class than royalty.
Richie Rich
Is this comics or cinema? Hank Pym married into money; in his first appearance, he was scrounging for grant money. Natasha Romanoff is much younger in the movies than the comics (In the movies, she was born after the Soviet Union fell), but in the comics it has been strongly implied that she’s descended from Russian (and therefore German) royalty. Clint Barton may be middle class in the movies, but in the comics he was a runaway and a carny.
Both of those have protagonists that are middle class who end up getting unexpectedly turned into royalty, so I’m not sure they count, For the middle-class pre-teens girls those movies are aimed at, the presumably relatable backgrounds of the main characters are sort of the point.
IIRC, Penelope, from 2006 has an upper class protagonist.
There’s a difference between European old money (which goes back to the Middle Ages and stays focused on a single heir at a time) and American old money (which typically lasts about three generations, since we have no law of primogeniture). Most American old money only dates back to various gold rushes or oil booms. European old money dates back to land grants from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror.
Was gonna mention Nick and Nora Charles but silenus beat me to it. So instead I’ll add Jonathan and Jennifer Hart. Maybe not old money upper class but upper class anyway in wealth and lifestyle.
The accusation I have heard is that, in modern pop culture (the films and TV and novels of the past couple of decades, at least), it’s businessmen—especially large corporations and their leaders or representatives—that are invariably portrayed as villains.
Tris in the Divergent series by Veronica Roth (I haven’t seen the movies, but in the book, her father is a leader of their society, which is upper class even though Abnegation rejects personal wealth.)
The Baudelaire children in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Lady Georgiana Rannoch in Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness novels.
Not really surprising. You generally want an underdog for a protagonist, which is harder to do for someone that starts as head of a powerful corporation or heir to a small kingdom. Hence we have a plethora of orphans, working stiffs and down and out types as heroes, while the already wealthy and powerful provide the villains. A movie where the billionaire with a heart of gold uses his vast fortune to destroy the evil street urchin would be kind of hard to make suspenseful.
Superheroes are kind of an interesting exception. But then its sort of the nature of a superhero that they aren’t the underdog, the whole point is that they have powers beyond the ordinary. So humble beginnings are less important there.
But hey, I thought of another (actually) recent one. The lead character in the ironically briefly lived TV series Forever is the son of a wealthy slave merchant.
A lot of fictional detectives are either aristocrats or very well off. Lord Peter Wimsey is upper crust and Nero Wolfe has his own live-in chef and orchid expert.