A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
