A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
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 living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
