An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, 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 collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
