A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
