A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
