A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
