A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
