An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly 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 killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
