A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
