An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
