A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
