An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
