A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing 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 condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
