An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
