A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
