An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
