A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — 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 idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
