An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid