An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
