An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
