A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
