An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
