A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
