An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 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 alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
