A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
