A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
