An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
