An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
