An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged 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 setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
