A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite 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 pitting 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" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting 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 movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 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 targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
