An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
