A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
