A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
