A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
