A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
