A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
