An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle 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, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
