A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story 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 incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
