A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
