An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
