A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered 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 at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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
