A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, 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 — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
