A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 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, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
