A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
