A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure 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 headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
