A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
