A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan 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 Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
