An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
