A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
