A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
