A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
