A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
