An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
