An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
