A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated 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 executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
