A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
