An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing 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 film, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
