An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
