A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
