A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
