An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
