A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
