A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, 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 early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
