A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
