A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
