An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people 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 prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
