A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
