A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, 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 wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
