An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent 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* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
