An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
