An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
