A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
