A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
