An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
