A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables 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 institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid