A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
