A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
