A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people 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 dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
