An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
