A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
