A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
