An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
