A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
