An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
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 exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
