A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine 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 evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
