A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting 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 — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
