A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
