A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
