An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
