A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message 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 more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
