A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
