A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
