A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
