A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
