A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally 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 obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
