An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
