A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
