A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
