A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream 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 mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
