An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
