A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
