An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered 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 purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
