A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
