An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting 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 moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
