An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
