A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
