A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor 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* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
