A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered 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, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
