A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
