An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
