A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
