A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
