A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
