A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really 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 worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
