A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
