A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
