An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
