A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
