A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
