A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
