🔗 Share this article

A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid