A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
