A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
