A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
