An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
