A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
