A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, 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 societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
