An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys 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 tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
