A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
