A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
