An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
