A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, 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 dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
