A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury 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 top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving 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, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
