A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
