A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
