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A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid