An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, 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 blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
