A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
