An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
