A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
