A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
