An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
