A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
