An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, 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 apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
