An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
