A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed 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 wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
