A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 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 targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
