A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
