A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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
