An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
