An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
