A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
