An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit 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 wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
