A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
