An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 eliminated by mythological beasts (*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 at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
