An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
