A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
