A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
