A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
