A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
