An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, 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 societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid