A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
