A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. 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 digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
