A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
