A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials 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 allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
