A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
