An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
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 desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
