A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
