A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
