A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
