An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
