A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
