A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
