A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, 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 virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
