A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
