A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector 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 arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like 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 steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
