An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
