A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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
