A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
