An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
