A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
