A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
