A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
