A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
