A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *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 living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed 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 murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
