A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
