A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
