A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
