A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
