A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
