A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
