A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure 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 daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
