A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive 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 applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
