An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From 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 wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
