An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
