A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
