An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
