An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen 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 preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals 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 executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
