An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
