A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
