A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed 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, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
