A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
