A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
