A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
