An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
