A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
