A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little 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 greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, 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 provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
