A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
