A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
