A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned 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 apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
