An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. 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, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
