A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money 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 devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
