An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea 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 plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
