A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank 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, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
