A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 wealthy people 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 directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
