A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
