An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
