An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, 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 exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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
