A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
