A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming 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 make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated 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 executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
