An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
