A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. 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 to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
