An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. 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 above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
