An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany 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 especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story 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 riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone 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 enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
