An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
