A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy 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 indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer 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* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
