A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting 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 — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved 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 impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
