A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed 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 up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
