A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
