A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting 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 cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
