A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
