A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "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 contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
