A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
