🔗 Share this article

A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid