A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*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 conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
