An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
