An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
