An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
