A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
