An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*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 a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
