A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality 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 into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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
