A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
