An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
