A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*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 apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
