A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*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 executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
