An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
