A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant 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 ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
