An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
