An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
