An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
