A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
