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A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid