A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
