An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 tech-bro villain, 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 exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
