A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
