A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
