A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
