A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
