A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
