A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
