A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
