A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 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 specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
