A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*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 directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
