A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
