An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
