An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family 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 On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
