An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, 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 dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
