A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen 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 exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
