A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
