A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
