A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
