A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
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 virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
