A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
