An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
