A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
