A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, 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 conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
