An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
