A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing 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 film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
