An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*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 shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
