A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
