A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
