A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
