A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car 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" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
