A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
