A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
