A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
