A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
