An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
