A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
