An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
