A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
