A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
