A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*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*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
