An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
