A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious 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 executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
