A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
