A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging 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 applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
