A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
