A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
