A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
