A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed 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 hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
