A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed 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 more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
