A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
