An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
