An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
