A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
