A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
