An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
