A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
