An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news 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 communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*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, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
