A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
