A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, 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 — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
