A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
