A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
