A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
