A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
