A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
