An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message 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 incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
