A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
