A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
