An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, 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 neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth 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 consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
