An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
