A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
