A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
