A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
