A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
