The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Refuse to Listen.

A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays 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 avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, 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 public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid