A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise 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 affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
