An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
