A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
