A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying 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.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. 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 subjugated, 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 colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
