A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
