A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
