An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
