A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*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 executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
