A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
