An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
