A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit 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 wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
