An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
