A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, 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 — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 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 furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
