A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
