An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
