A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
