A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
