A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
