An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*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 super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
