A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, 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 collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
