An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
