An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
