A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content 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 largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
