A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream 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 tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
