A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
