A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
