An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people 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 stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing 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 news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely 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* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
