An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
