A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
