An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
