A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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 affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
