A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade 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 steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
