A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals 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 replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades 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 provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
