An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
