A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
