An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered 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 shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
