An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*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 gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
