A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at 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 make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
