A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, 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 collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
