A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *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 dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting 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 cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds 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* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
