An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed 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*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
