An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine 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 antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive 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 overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
