A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
