A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
