A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
