A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people 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 hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
