A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated 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 gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
