An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
