An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
