A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
