An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing 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 daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
