An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
