An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
