A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
