A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
