A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
