A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
