A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
