A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
