An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
