A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
