A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul 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 dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
