An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
