An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
