An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
