An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
