A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
