A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
