A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after 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, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
