A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
