A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
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 especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
