A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*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 shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
