An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, 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 — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
