A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed 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 finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
