A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
