A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
