An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
