🔗 Share this article

A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*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 gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid