A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
