A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
