A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
