A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
