An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, 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’s rarely enough in the current era 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
