A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
