A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*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 apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
