An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
