A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
