An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
