An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
