A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, 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 giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
