An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
