A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
