An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
