A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
