A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
