A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures 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" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid