A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
