A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
