A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
