A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered 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 stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
