A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed 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 wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
