An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
