A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
