A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though 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. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
