A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
