A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given 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 theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
