An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
