A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
