A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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
