A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
