A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
