A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid