A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
