A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
