A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption 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 headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
