A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
