A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
