A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
