An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
