A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed 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 take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
