A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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