A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
