An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
