A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
