An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
