An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, 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 substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
