A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
