An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
