A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
