A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
