An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
