A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
