A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, 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
