A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 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 hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
