A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
