A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
