An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
